QuickTime 6 downloads top 25 million


Apple has announced that more than 25 million copies of QuickTime 6 have been downloaded in less than 100 days, demonstrating strong demand for the open standard MPEG-4 format upon which QuickTime 6 is based. Additionally, nearly 200,000 copies of the QuickTime Streaming Server and Darwin Streaming Server has also found their way into users' hands.

"QuickTime 6 has taken off like a rocket, with over 25 million downloads in 100 days," said Philip Schiller, senior vice president, worldwide product marketing. "Why pay for a proprietary streaming solution when Apple is offering the first widely distributed end-to-end, open-standards-based streaming solution for free?"

"Jive Records used MPEG-4 to deliver a massive number of video streams of Britney Spears' on-line exclusive, I Love Rock and Roll," said Jeff Dodes, vice president, new media, Jive Records. "QuickTime 6 has allowed us to deliver incredible quality audio and video from one of our hottest artists to her fans around the world."

"Yankee Hotel, Fox Trot has been WILCO's most successful album to date, blowing away all industry expectations, and we couldn't have done it without QuickTime and MPEG-4 on our site," said Tony Margherita, manager, WILCO. "We're even doing a live broadcast from the 930 Club in Washington, DC this week using MPEG-4 because it's the best way to deliver quality content at a wide range of bandwidths."

"Discreet cleaner 6 for Apple Macintosh supports QuickTime 6 and addresses the growing demand for tools that encode to the MPEG-4 standard--continuing Discreet's long tradition of supporting the latest and greatest encoding standards," said Joseph Klingler, Discreet's senior director of Software Development.

Released Macworld New York on July 15, QuickTime 6 with support for MPEG-4 is Apple's industry-leading, standards-based software for developing, producing and delivering high-quality audio and video over IP, wireless and broadband networks. More than 126 million users downloaded the QuickTime Player via the Internet in the last year, while tens of millions more copies were distributed via digital cameras, software titles and enhanced music CDs.

Editor's note: The marque feature in QT 6 in MPEG-4 and that shines best when streamed. What we really need now is more streamed audio and video content using the new standard. A right step in that direction would be an iTunes update that allows ripping using MPEG-4.